A major role in the corn supply of the Roman armies, from at least the third century BC on, is ascribed to large scale contractors, who took care of all aspects of organization, administration and execution. In Badian's influential study of these private entrepreneurs, it is supposed that the feeding of the Roman armies exceeded the capabilities of the Roman governmental apparatus; as a result, the state in Republican times had to rely on private enterprise. 2 The role given to private entrepreneurs assumes that private trade was capable of supplying and distributing huge amounts of corn without much difficulty. On the other hand, the capabilities of the Roman governmental structure seem very limited. The question whether indeed it was private business and not the Roman state itself that managed the corn supply of the Roman armies is important for our understanding of the Roman wars, the state and private trade in this period. It is the purpose of this paper to show that the evidence furnished for the role of large scale contractors in the corn supply of the armies is inadequate. The sources provide ample evidence of other means the Roman government had to acquire corn for its armies.

I wish to express my gratitude to professors JS Richardson, E. Badian and G. Rickman and dr. G. de Kleijn for their stimulating criticism of an earlier draft of this paper. The paper was partly written during a visit to the University of Edinburgh, which was made possible by a grant from the Reiman-De Bas Fonds, Netherlands. 2 E. Badian, Publicans and sinners. Private enterprise in the service of the Roman republic, Oxford 1972, 16ff. This emphasis on the role of private business, caused by the rudimentary governmental structure, is, according to G. Rickman, The corn supply of ancient Rome, Oxford 1980, 26, 34, an important point in connection with the civilian corn supply as well. Badian seems to be regarded as decisive since. See eg PA Brunt,'Die Equites in der spaten Republik', ubers. u. erw. v.'The equites in the late Republic', 1962, in: H. Schneider (Hrsg.), Zur Sozial-und Wirtschaftgeschichte der spaten romischen Republik, Darmstadt 1976, 175-213, 210; ES Gruen,'Material rewards and the drive for empire', in: WV Harris (ed.), The imperialism of mid-republican Rome, Papers and monographs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. 29, Rome 1984, 65. The point had also been made by G. Ur6gdi,'Publicani', RE Suppl. Il, 1968, 1188.